JSW Steel Ltd on Monday said that it signed an agreement with Japan’s JFE Steel Corporation for electrical steel technology.

JFE will provide technology for the production of cold rolled non-oriented (CRNO) electrical steel sheets at JSW’s Vijayanagar plant in Karnataka.

JSW Steel plans to start its new annealing and coating line for electrical steel sheets in the latter half of 2014. The initial annual output is projected to be 200,000 tonnes, which will be increased to 0.6 million tonnes per year in phases.

The company will also take up the production of cold rolled grain oriented (CRGO) grade in future.

Electrical steel sheet products are currently imported as except for SAIL no other major steel maker in the country has the technology to produce it.

SAIL at present produces 25,000 tonnes a year of CRNO grade electrical steel at its Rourkela plant and is in advanced stage of putting up another 1.8 lakh tonnes a year capacity unit. It has also tied up with Posco for further expansion of capacity in CRNO grade steel.

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd and BHEL have also been trying to procure technology from two overseas firms to put up a electrical steel manufacturing plant at Vizag.

jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in